Why You Collect: The Question Every Collector Should Ask First
- Jul 28
- 6 min read
By Tony Lécuroux MS
Master Sommelier
Private wine adviser
This is the first piece in an ongoing series on wine collecting and cellar management, written for collectors, fellow wine lovers, and anyone beginning to think seriously about building their own collection. Each article stands on its own, but together they build a complete picture. Come back for the next instalment, or explore the others already published.
Why Collecting?
Most private wine collections are built for more than one reason. Pleasure, legacy and financial value often exist together.
Has the balance in your own collection ever been clearly defined?
A few years ago, a client came to me in quiet distress. He had been collecting wine for nearly twenty years, seriously, deliberately, spending real money. He had thousands of bottles from a single region, carefully sourced, properly stored. On paper, it was an impressive cellar. But when we sat down together, I could see something was wrong.
In fact, he told me he had stopped enjoying it. The wines he owned weren't what he drank anymore. His tastes had moved on, quietly, without him noticing, and he had kept buying in the same direction out of habit. He felt trapped by his own collection. Surrounded by bottles he didn't want to open, and unsure where to begin again.
Most collectors know which wines they enjoy, but it can be much harder to assess a collection as a whole: buying habits, changing tastes, storage, drinking windows and future value can pull a cellar in different directions.
An independent review can reveal what is working, what is missing, and what no longer supports the collector's goals.
Pleasure and Legacy
Collecting wine primarily for pleasure means buying bottles you're genuinely excited to open. You're thinking about the dinner you'll share, the people across the table, the moment itself. You might age some bottles, but only because you're waiting for the right occasion, the right pairing, the right person to share it with.
This isn't less serious or less demanding than investment collecting. You still need real knowledge, understanding what's worth drinking, what will age gracefully enough to justify holding it, how it pairs with food and with life.
But your success isn't measured in financial return. It's measured in the moments you create.
For many of my clients, pleasure collecting also carries a sense of legacy. Bottles chosen to pass forward, to open at a milestone with your children, to tell the story of your taste and your travels over decades. That's a form of value with nothing to do with market price, and everything to do with meaning.
The Investment Collector: Building for Financial Return
Collecting wine as an investment means approaching bottles as financial assets. You're thinking about market trends, rarity, provenance, and condition as capital protection, rather than a personal taste.
This requires a different kind of discipline. You might purchase a wine you've never tasted, and may never taste, because you know the market will value it in five, ten, twenty years.
A 2018 Château Latour in Primeur isn't a bottle to enjoy on a Tuesday evening. It's a holding with financial potential. You separate your personal palate from your purchasing strategy.
Investment collecting demands precision. You need to know fair market pricing so you don't overpay. You need to understand provenance: where the bottle has lived, who's owned it, whether it's been stored properly.
Because the condition directly impacts resale value. You need professional storage that guarantees protection, because a bottle stored poorly loses half its value overnight, regardless of what you paid for it.
The payoff is real. Wine can appreciate meaningfully over time, especially if you're buying at the right moment, from the right producers, with an eye toward scarcity and demand. But it requires you to think like an investor, not like a drinker.
Where Most Collections Actually Sit
In my experience in advising private clients, almost nobody is purely one or the other. You might be 70% pleasure collector and 30% investment. Or fifty-fifty.
The key is understanding your own ratio, because it shapes everything.
It will determine where you source your bottles, how you store them, what you hold onto, when you sell, and how you reassess your collection as life shifts.
The client I mentioned earlier hadn't set out to be purely investment-focused. But over time, he'd been buying wines he loved, wines that reflected his own taste, without thinking about whether they'd hold value or appreciate. Then, around fifty, his palate shifted. He wanted to sell and start over again, pivot to wines he was genuinely passionate about again. At the same time, he knew it was too late for him to invest in new vintages. He would never see the result of having a new collection starting that late in his life.
When he moved those bottles to market, reality hit hard. The wines he'd collected so carefully didn't command the prices he expected. Some weren't investment-grade bottles. Some were very personal, and the market doesn't pay premium prices for those. He lost money on the sale. And he had spent twenty years collecting something that, when he finally needed to move it, turned out to be neither a solid investment nor something he still wanted to drink.
That's the trap. When you don't know your own why, you end up building something that doesn't serve you in either direction.
Why This Matters Practically
Sourcing, storage, and how long you hold a bottle aren't separate decisions. They compound over years, and each one should still reflect who you are: your style, your identity, and whether you're collecting for pleasure, legacy, investment, or a mix of the three.
That's exactly where ongoing advisory support matters. Not simply pointing you toward where to buy or how to store, but reviewing your collection as it stands today and helping you make the right call at each stage, from sourcing to keeping your wine in the best possible condition, to deciding when to hold and when to sell, always measured against your own taste and your own goals rather than a generic template.
This is the kind of continued perspective I offer as a private wine adviser. Not a one-off consultation, but ongoing support as your collection, your taste, and your goals evolve. If you'd like a second pair of eyes on your own cellar, get in touch.
Where I Come In
My role is to help clients step back and look at their collection clearly. I assess what they own, what they genuinely drink, how their tastes are evolving, and how pleasure, legacy and financial value fit together.
From there, we decide what to keep, what to open, what to stop buying, and how the cellar should develop.
It's rarely about starting from scratch. Most collections already hold real value. The work is in seeing that value clearly, and building a plan around it.
A collection does not need to serve only one purpose. What matters is understanding the balance between enjoyment, legacy and value — and recognising when that balance begins to change.
If your collection has grown without a clear structure, or no longer reflects what you enjoy and want to achieve, a private cellar review can provide clarity and direction.
*In the next article, I look at one of the most important decisions behind any collection: where to buy, whom to trust, and how sourcing shapes the long-term quality of a cellar.
Contact me to begin a confidential conversation about your collection, or subscribe to receive the next article in the series.
Want to explore the world of fine wine with genuine expertise?
At Paroles de Vins, I offer private wine consulting, curated tastings, and exclusive wine experiences for collectors, investors, and hospitality professionals who demand more than a label. → Visit parolesdevins.com to discover our services → Follow @parolesdevins on Instagram for field dispatches from the world's great wine regions → Contact: info@parolesdevins.com |
About the Author
Tony Lécuroux MS
Tony Lécuroux is a Master Sommelier, one of fewer than 300 in the world to hold this distinction, and the 2nd Best Sommelier of Switzerland 2025.
I am the founder of Paroles de Vins, a wine advisory & Wine Concierge company, also creating events based in Switzerland.
I am also a certified lecturer of Wine Education Switzerland, delivering ISG certification programmes across the country.
Having spent a decade working in Michelin-starred restaurants across England and Switzerland, I now work with private clients, estates, and hospitality groups across Europe and beyond.
I grew up near Hermitage in the Northern Rhône Valley, a place that continues to shape my understanding of what wine, at its best, can be.
This article reflects Tony's personal vision and field experience, and does not represent the position of any commercial partner or institution.
The next articles in this series walk you through the practical mechanics: where to source with confidence, how to store properly, how to house your collection as it grows. But none of that matters until you've answered this question first.
So ask yourself: am I building for pleasure, for legacy, for investment, or some mix of all three? Once you know, everything else becomes clearer.
Coming Next in the Series
Where and how to buy from an investment perspective
Keeping your collection in perfect storage for long-term ageing and vision
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